Books of the Year 2021

Reviewing the books I’ve read over the course of the year has thrown up some interesting revelations, the main one being that (discounting the 1.2 million words of editing and appraisal for editorial clients) a third of my reading has been fiction and two thirds non-fiction, which is a trend I’ve noticed over the past few years. Fiction has played such an important part in my life: it has been an entertainment, distraction, comfort and escape. So why am I not such an addict these days?

Maybe it takes a lot for me to feel that huge excitement - the excitement of discovery. So many books are fine. Just that: fine. They do the job. They don’t reinvent the wheel. Which is also fine. The wheel is a necessity and reinventing it is not. But, well, often the response when reading or finishing is a tepid meh. There are books which are competent. Books I don’t dislike but which haven’t dazzled me in terms of language, plot or approach. I think I may have been around the block just too many times.

This is not to say there were no enjoyable reads! Examples were Summerwater by Sarah Moss, The Terror by Dan Simmons, Blood Rose Angel by Liza Perrat, Hidden by Linda Gillard, How Icasia Bloom Found Happiness by Jessica Bell, I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections by Nora Ephron and A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson. The to-be-read pile didn’t shrink either, so 2002 won’t lack for reading material!

Why so many non-fic reads? Well, quite a number were for research for the book I’m writing. Some of these overlapped with reading I would have done anyway in a year where I was pretty obsessed with pain and the mind-body interface. Books like Katherine May’s Wintering. I read books about breathing and resting and overcoming pain, about brainpower and memory, about escape and ageing and education and race. I read autobiographical quests for identity and meaning. All of these topics spoke to me and some of these books will stay with me for the rest of my life. Highlights included Bluestockings by Jane Robinson, Remembering by Lisa Genova, a re-read of How to Live - A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

It was, of course, difficult to pick the top reads and I don’t want to settle on just one, that’s for sure, so here are my favourites, against strong competition.

Carol Cooper: The Girls from Alexandria. This novel was a lyrical feast spiced with wit and memory. It transported me to Alexandria in the 1950s, casting a sensory spell.

Bernardine Evaristo: Girl, Woman, Other. This was a deserving Booker Prize winner (and, may I say, should not have had to settle for being a joint Booker winner, either). An extraordinary range of voice and experience, a revelation. Verve.

Clare Chambers: Small Pleasures. Non-operatic, quiet, beautifully observed, poignant, tragi-comic. A gem as fine as those one of her characters works with.

Natalie Haynes: A Thousand Ships. There is a vogue these days for Greek mythology recast as fiction. I loved Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles some years back and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls last year. This novel gives voice to the women of the fall of Troy and does so with exquisite changes of voice and perception.

Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score. A densely informative and often shattering exploration of how trauma takes root in our physiology, often without our recognising what it is doing to us over the decades.

Susan Cain: Quiet. As an introvert, but one who can play to the gallery when I need to, I found this book echoed many of my thoughts about a world that favours extroversion. Introverts the world over can reassured: it’s OK - it’s more than OK - to be an introvert.

Bernardine Evaristo: Manifesto. Yes, Bernardine again, with a frank and pointed journey through her familial, emotional and creative life, against the backdrop of a society not on that keen on people like her finding their independent place within it. Inspiring - again.

Caroline Criado Perez: Invisible Women. I lived through feminism’s second wave and thought we had it all sorted. We don’t. Her thesis is that there is bias, often unconscious, in the data that help to form aspects of our daily lives, from dosages of medicine to the safety of cars to the electoral and educational systems. Revelations to stop you in your tracks.

Rachel Clarke: Dear Life. Trust the title. In the midst of illness and death, this doctor, who has since written just as powerfully about the pandemic, describes how she found her path to palliative medicine and how the joy and worth of life shines through, no matter what. I defy you to read this and not shed tears. Her work should be obligatory reading, along with the two previous books I’ve mentioned, for every politician of whatever party.

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You want to write - what's stopping you?

It starts with the dream, one that often starts early. You’re a child bookworm, you live inside your imagination, you start making up stories – and you dream, one day, that those stories will make it into print. 

For some people, that dream fades as other dreams come along and take its place. But for some of us, the dream becomes an addiction. An obsession. We may spend years trying to make the dream come true: we practice, we learn, we try and try again. 

We face continual challenges and we try to beat them all. Some are external, many are internal -  and when it comes to those internal ones, we tend to think we’re alone, thinking and feeling the way we do. 

But we’re not. 

And here’s where I ask for your help, because for the past couple of years I’ve been working on a book on mindset for writers. At the start of the project I ran a survey which yielded incredibly useful answers and played a strong part in guiding the direction of the book. Now, as I get near to completing the draft, I’m running a new survey. I want to check I am on target with what you want to see in it and whether I’ve given the right proportion of space to certain issues, plus I need to check if there is any area I’ve missed. 

Those who’ve already contributed – thank you! Your responses are invaluable. This book is a distillation of all I have learned personally, all the advice I’ve given during twenty years of being a writing coach, all the feedback I’ve had from those I’ve worked with. 

By completing the survey you are, quite simply, helping me to help you – and others. The survey only takes a few minutes and it’s anonymous unless you wish to give your name. 

The survey is here. Thank you so much in advance. Please share with other writers if you can – the more responses I get the more targeted my book can be!

To sign up for updates, sneak peeks and launch goodies when The Unputdownable Writer’s Mindset is published, go here.

Books of the Year 2020

Reviewing my year’s reading is an annual ritual and this year, like any other, has been one of many delights and some disappointments. I’ve been able to read more during 2020 because … well, the pandemic and so forth. Add on a couple of operations and time to read while convalescing, and my total was greater than last year. This isn’t going to be anywhere near a comprehensive list but here are the highlights.

As I read for research and in order to teach writing, there will always be the ‘reading for the job’ aspect. This year many of those books were to do with theories of creativity, neuroscience and the search for meaning, which have helped me clarify some of my thinking for the book I’m writing on mindset for writers.

When it comes to novels and short stories, I loved Pat Barker’s The Silent Girls, C.J. Sansom’s Tombland, Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall, Susannah Rickards’s Hot Kitchen Snow, Geraldine McCaughrean’s Where the World Ends and Susan Fletcher’s Let Me Tell you about a Man I Knew – the last of which took me back to Provence in the heat of summer, in its account of Vincent van Gogh’s sojourn at the asylum in St Rèmy de Provence. All of these offered me what I love most: beauty of language, being transported in time and place, something memorable to stay with me after I closed the covers.

For sheer gorgeousness, Jackie Morris’s The Unwinding, which I subscribed to via crowdfunding publisher Unbound, was so very beautiful I bought her second version, The Silent Unwinding, where the text is removed and the illustrations remain so you can use it as a notebook. (Did I? No! Too beautiful!)

In non-fiction, Halle Rubenhold’s account of the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper, The Five, was a powerful portrayal of the blighted existences of women toppling into destitution in heartless Victorian times – a true-crime contradiction of the message of A Christmas Carol. No one here is saved. Raynor Unwin’s very human and uplifting account of tracing the South-west coast path with her husband, in an act of desperate life affirmation in the teeth of illness, took me to Devon and Cornwall once more. (I’ve just been given its sequel for Christmas.) Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am was heartstoppingly good – especially the first part. Oh my. Unforgettable.

In the weeks of recovery from a major operation, I indulged in comfort reads. Escape reads. Reading that washed over me, lulled me, took me out of myself when I was in pain. That doesn’t necessarily mean they were fluffy reads: I like a good thriller so Tess Gerritsen featured – The Shape of Night. Clare Flynn’s Penang trilogy (The Pearl of Penang, The Prisoner of Penang and A Painter in Penang) described the lushness of the Far East but also the privations of war, loss and betrayal. JJ Marsh’s Odd Numbers was a spikily intelligent multi-voiced thriller, ranging through a satisfyingly wide array of locations. But there were also the heartwarming reads: Carol Drinkwater’s The House at the Edge of the Cliff (south of France once more!); Barbara Erskine’s Time’s Legacy (she is the diva of time-slip novels) and Debbie Young’s warm and witty cosy crime novel Best Murder in Show, with its gentle satire of village life.

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As I said, this is just a selection and I really feel it was a good year of reading, this one. But you’ll see from the image I have picked four highlights.

First, Maria Popova’s Figuring. Now, in no way is this an easy read. It’s the kind of book that highlights just how much you don’t know. And it is all about connections. You may have heard of Brain Pickings, Maria’s blog, where she highlights the wisdom of philosophers, artists, musicians, scientists and writers. That description completely fails to capture the breadcrumb trail of fascinating quotes and snippets she lays and the way she dances you from one to another, spinning the lines of connection between them. You can spend whole days just clicking links! Well Figuring is this in book form: she explores the lives of women astronomers, artists, writers, thinkers. Some well known, like Emily Dickinson and Rachel Carson, others less so, like Margaret Fuller, Maria Mitchell and Harriet Hosmer. She shows them trying to create lives of mental and social independence in contexts of greater or lesser restriction, simply because they are women. It is dense, knotty, incredibly detailed, often hard to follow as she tracks to and fro between lives and eras, at times utterly gripping (there is a shipwreck scene that will etch itself on your brain), and always fascinating. It took me weeks to read but I am so very glad I did.

Next we have Anna McGrail’s A Life in 26 Letters. It is exactly that: Anna uses correspondence she sent or was sent to trigger memories of stages of her life. I am proud to say I read this book in draft and am so glad to see it in print. I love everything about it. Her voice is precise, mordant, utterly non-self-pitying. I love her observations: unsentimental but capable of triggering tears and sighs of recognition and fellow-feeling. I love her wit. I love that she and I share the same generational background so every detail – alien, no doubt, to editors of publishing houses who don’t share those memories and experiences – strikes a chord. In short, you identify with her. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Thirdly, Jane Davis has explored the position of women in 1950s society in her compelling novel At the Stroke of Nine O’Clock. She interweaves the stories of three women: an aristocratic grande dame, a club hostess and a famous actress shunned for her extra-marital affair, as all three are affected by the fate of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged for murder in England. The sense of the era is impeccably evoked, the dialogue brittle and resonant, the tension between public life and private secrets is ever-present and the overall effect poignant and powerful. (Jane’s previous novel, Smash all the Windows, was my book of the year 2018 – read about it here.)

Finally, Mary Oliver. Upstream is a collection of essays. Meditations celebrating the importance of just … living, seeing, noticing. I knew her already as a poet, but this book blew me away. It is so profound, yet that profundity is couched in prose often deceptively simple. Lucid, limpid, wise, with phrases to roll around your tongue and preserve in your brain, memorable, incantatory – a kind of blessing that such a brain and voice should have existed, a comfort in a world of Covid and climate change, yet hers is not a sentimental, escapist brand of nature-loving. It looks things in the eye. This is a book that looks at the preciousness and littleness of life and celebrates its significance in every form it takes, on this lovely, blighted, vulnerable planet of ours.

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OK, I mentioned disappointments at the start of this review. There are always disappointments. Some books lose the power to charm us, even if we loved them once. Some hold no appeal, ever. Some are shallow, some repellent. What disappointed me most this year – and I am not going to name them – were the books that could have been better, had they been properly edited. And they were all trade-published books. I’m sorry, but really. There were gaping plot-holes and trailing plotlines. There were factual inaccuracies and anachronisms, howling errors in grammar and spelling. There were rushes to unsatisfying endings, as if the editor had told the writer to tie it all up in the last 20 pages, thanks. One of these had been shortlisted for the Booker a few years back, another was from a multi-published thriller writer whose previous book I had enjoyed. All started well, but then failed to deliver. And that is disappointing.

But that may be the editor in me speaking. I read as a reader. But I read as an editor too – I cannot for the life of me switch that beady-eyed perspective off!

Signing off, looking forward to the books I’ll read in 2021!

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Kickstart your Imagination: how Writing Prompts Work

Let’s start with why I’m talking about writing prompts at all. A strangely organic process has been taking place over the past few months. It began when we headed into lockdown: I started thinking about how I could help writers by running a free online writing retreat session. (By the way, I’m about to run my fourth one tomorrow – you can sign up here).

Loads of 40 people signed up for it, which blew me away. Then I had to come up with the structure for the session. I could, of course, have welcomed attendees, set a timer and let them get on with their current work in progress.

But I felt more was needed, so I set about designing two separate writing sprint sessions, each with eight prompts, one of which was a picture. That became the template for each retreat, book-ended with discussion and chat.

Five weeks ago, I started thinking again. I know, it’s a bad habit I’ve fallen into …

I was thinking of the people who couldn’t attend the online retreats – or didn’t want to because they didn’t like the tech aspect of joining an online meeting. What about them? I decided I’d design a little PDF of prompts for them.

I came up with prompts. And more prompts. I spent my late evenings on Canva, designing the pages. I added workbook pages and advice on creating a retreat when you’re at home. 53 pages on, I realised I had more than a quick PDF resource: I had a self-study mini-course. It went live on Tuesday and until midnight on Sunday 21st you can get it for $17, which is less than half price. (Find out more here.)

But, back to the whole notion of prompts. I have fun creating them because I imagine the kinds of stories they’ll inspire. We writers are eternally afraid of the blank mind, the blank page. The urge to write that has no focus on what to write.

So when the Muse isn’t making home deliveries, we need those triggers, those little goads to the imagination. And what’s fascinating is how writers can make such different stories out of the same prompts – that’s certainly been evident in the online retreats so far.

Prompts work in different ways, so let’s explore some of them and why they work.

• There’s the ‘opening sentence’ kind of prompt. It acts like a springboard into what follows. It’s like you stop telling a joke just before the punchline and you let someone else come up with that punchline and deliver it. A trigger like this works because we like to fill in the blanks, the gaps between given facts. Conversely, you could set an end-line and ask the writer to imagine the story that led up to that point.

• Then there’s dialogue – sometimes just a single speech, that works because it is so immediate, so intimate. You’re pulled into an exchange, a dynamic between characters. The speech makes you think of voice and tone and attitude – of the character who’s likely to speak in that way.

• Some prompts work because they’re evocative. A descriptive phrase, a metaphor, can create a mood, a scene. The writer drops in, looks around, imagines the kind of story that could be set there, the kind of situation that would give rise to that particular image.

• Then there’s the picture prompt. I always include them because some people’s imaginations are more easily triggered by seeing an image – it could be a face or an object or a place. A Mediterranean harbour. An old house or a distant planet. A flower held in a hand. A war memorial. (Are any of these triggering a story in you?)

• You can have theme prompts, where you present the trigger as a simple subject statement: ‘the pity of war’, for instance. Interestingly, these may not be the best route to imaginative story-creation. They can be the doorway to polemic instead, where message dominates what is written. It’s important to maintain empathy, to go into and inhabit story, rather than just preach.

• Finally, there are the single word prompts. Deceptively simple, even slightly flat at first sight, these are the prompts that yield richness because they are more oblique, more of a hint, more open to interpretation.

Prompts are a resource to turn to when you’re feeling restive and when, as I said earlier, you want to write but you don’t know what you want to write. You hand over responsibility to a single word or image or teasing phrase. Your imagination, like a dog that’s flopped in the corner on a hot day, stirs, rises, starts to look eager at the prospect of a walk.

Keep a box or book of writing prompts by you, if you can. Treat the box like a lucky dip. Flip the pages of the book. Pick a prompt without too much thought. Toy with it, turn it this way and that in the light. Let it start to fire the neurons in your creative brain. I promise you it will.

Interested in using prompts to restart or kickstart your creativity? My new self-study mini-course, Create your Home Writing Retreat is here. Plus I’m now creating two bonuses.

• First, for as long as I run my free retreats the prompts we’ve used in each session will be added to the course.

• Secondly, I’m designing a new PDF, Create your Writer’s Prompt Box, so you can build your own inspiring resource, one which will stand you in good stead on those dry days.

Join my free online writing retreat session Saturday 20th June - go here.

Create your Home Writing Retreat - go here.

The pressure to do, the need to be: finding daily meaning in a time of crisis

I’m writing this at the height of the Coronavirus epidemic, at a time when we don’t even know yet how many people have succumbed to this terrible virus because the numbers we’re being told only include hospital deaths. This is a time when politicians flail and flounder, desperately trying to cover their backs. This is a time of looking back, of questioning why we were so ill-prepared when we had two months of knowing this disease was heading our way. This is a time of looking back to a past where by comparison all was safe and taken for granted. This is a time where we in the UK think of our Brexit stress and laugh grimly, because really, it didn’t compare. We thought that was bad? Well, now we fear not just for our economy but for our very lives and the lives of those we love.

How have you been feeling during this time? I would guess that with every passing hour you feel something different. Anger, pain, anxiety, sorrow, terror and a weird kind of rebellious positivity can all pass through you in moments. What is particularly hard is the lack of control. We are forbidden to leave our homes unless under certain rules. We cannot do our jobs or run our businesses. We cannot earn and we wait for government bail-outs while fearing there will be a greater price to pay down the line, in that economic wilderness to come.

Horrendous, isn’t it? Yep. As I type this, I feel my heart race and my stomach clench with panic. The words are spilling out. Fear lies behind the chipper wartime-spirit we’re trying to show the world.

There’s another more subtle pressure at work here and I don’t know if you’ve felt it. The pressure to make good use of this, the strangest, most isolated of times. Because we are not all that isolated, in a way. We are still in touch via the ubiquitous Zoom rooms, social media, online news. It is coming at us from all angles, relentlessly, ceaselessly. And we hear messages about self-education, learning new skills, sorting out that pigsty of a house at last, cataloguing your library, getting bags of clothes ready for when the charity shops reopen, learning how to grow your own vegetables ….

People who are completely unused to designing the shape of their day without their work schedule programmed into it, flail around for a new structure. So many of us grew up with a work ethic that gave us identity and meaning because of what we do and how hard we work. I know that kind of conditioning affects me. I work, therefore I am.

And I do believe, strongly, in self-education and in stretching our own boundaries. One of the greatest benefits of the internet is the way it offers knowledge to all. I am part of that, as a student and a teacher (I will be shortly be redesigning some of my in-person workshops and putting them online).

But there comes a point, a still and quiet point like this, when you examine our notions of action and education. You realise we often define education in terms of its usefulness and that usefulness in terms of money and career. Progression. Progression to what?

Instead, look at it another way. If you want to take a programme or learn a skill, think about how much pleasure you will get from it. Think about how it opens up your mind and soul. How it enriches you, in other ways than the monetary ones.

Also, take time to stop. You’ve never had a better excuse. Just. Stop.

Open yourself to awareness of the gorgeousness of a spring that’s unfolding around us in what seems to me greater beauty than ever. Really look at it and listen to it and breathe it in. Clumps of cherry blossom and clouds of hawthorn. The bright green corrugated leaves of the hornbeam. Grape hyacinths and celandines. The rattle of magpies building their nests. The song of blackbird and robin. Skies clear of con-trails. The early bumblebees blundering past.

Read the books you’ve been meaning to, certainly, but don’t choose them because you ought to. Everyone is supposed to tackle Proust or War and Peace or something toweringly, titanically literary. You’re thinking now is the time to tackle heavy tomes, for your own good. No. Don’t do it. Pick the book you can sink into like a feather bed. Pick the book that throws a shawl around your shoulders. Pick the book that makes your heart dance with excitement. Pick the book that takes you back to the glee of childhood. Pick the book that takes you out of yourself, out of your worries, for a time …

Get back in touch with the privilege it is to have life, breath, and blood flowing in your veins. Take the next five or ten minutes after you read this and do … nothing. No lists, no pressure, no curiosity. Just be still.

Just be. 

• On my Facebook page over the past three weeks I’ve posted a daily poetry reading. I’ve selected the poems for their power to inspire or console. Head over here to listen to the latest!

• I’d love to hear which books are distracting, entertaining or consoling you right now! Comment below this post with your recommendations

• I have now run two free online writing retreats and these have gone so well I intend to run more. Sign up to my mailing list via the form below and you’ll be the first to hear when I arrange my next one!

  
  UPDATE: I’ve created a self-study mini-course, Create your Home Writing Retreat: find out more here.

Photo (c) Lorna Fergusson

Find solace in creating your home writing retreat - 7 tips and an invitation

In ‘normal’ life – which with every passing day right now takes on the shape of a mirage – how often have you dreamt of going on a writing retreat? Now, we’re in a time of crisis and there’s no choice: we can’t get away to write. We may have extra time at home, but that is time we didn’t choose to allocate to writing. It’s time where we may be distracted by family concerns and commitments, such as home-schooling our children. It’s also time in which to fret about the future – and fretting isn’t good for the creative muse.

All the same, people are pursuing new interests and spheres of knowledge. We’re rediscovering the pleasures of crafting. We’re learning languages or doing online fitness workouts. It’s quite amazing.

And you? You want to write. So today’s post is all about seeing your home (which at times may be feeling like a prison or a cramped overcrowded madhouse) as a haven. A retreat, in fact.

Here’s 7 tips for setting up your writing retreat at home.

1.  Choose a time. Your commitments are not going away. The dog needs a walk. The elder child needs to be coaxed into doing some schoolwork. The toddler needs to be watched in case they blunder into a sharp corner or decide that shoving a clothes-peg up their nose is the greatest idea in the world. You need to review the shape of your day – a shape that may have changed radically since lockdown. You used to write when the kids were at school. Now you may have to opt to rise before they do, or stay up late after they’ve gone to bed. You may need to bargain: you will give the family time and attention on condition that they give you your ‘me’ time to write. The other thing that’s important in all this is to try to negotiate a time that suits them and suits you, which is about knowing your own ‘best’ times of day in terms of alertness and creative flow.

2.  Choose a place. When we dream of retreats we dream of cottages by the sea or high-ceilinged rooms with a view or serene libraries, hushed as a monastery. Well, not now. You are going to have to claim some territory in that over-crowded land you call home. It may not be ideal, but it is worth selecting a location within the house where you put a flag up saying ‘This is my writing territory’. You may have a loft, a shed, or a spare room. You may not: then you’re going to have to choose your bedroom, or a corner of the living-room or the end of the kitchen table. Once again, it’s clear you’ll need to negotiate because all these places have other claimants too. But I think it is time to be tough, especially if you allow other people in the household to mark out their special places as well. In your chosen location, put down some possessions associated with your writing: your notebook and pens, the book you’re taking notes from, the laptop. These are visual cues to you and to the family that you mean business.

3. Make the special place just that – special. It’s important to see your writing retreat as a pleasure. So make everything about it as joyous or as peaceful as possible. Work in natural or good lighting. Sit on a comfortable supportive seat. Play music in the background, if that helps you. Use scented oils in a diffuser. I use a Tisserand pulse-spot roll-on which has rosemary, mint and bergamot in it. Write in a beautiful notebook where even to touch the paper is a pleasure. Use your favourite pen. Wear a silk kimono if you want to, or your fleecy onesie.

4. Ring-fence your creativity. You need to put up an imaginary barrier to distractions or worries or guilt. This can take the form of an actual sign you put up: Keep Out, or Silence Please (I have a Bodleian Library Silence sign I hang on the doorknob). You can also have a notice or card propped up in front of you with a favourite quote or a few words saying ‘You can do it’ or ‘Stay with it’ or ‘You deserve time to write’ or ‘Your words matter’ or any other encouraging message you want to give yourself. Switch off the distractions of emails and social media notifications. Don’t listen to the news (I am rationing tuning into news bulletins these days). Ask your family members to write down any questions or requests and place them gently just outside your place of creativity: you’ll attend to them later. Wear headphones, not just to shut out extraneous noise but as a visual signal to the others that you are, literally, in your own head-space right now. Have a pad of post-its by you and if any distraction, reminder for your to-do list or anxious thought arises, jot it down there and push it aside, for later. Don’t break the now of your retreat.

5.  Have modest goals. If you’re feeling stressed, don’t add to that stress by being too ambitious. Set a reasonable time-limit and break the big creative task down into smaller, achievable goals. Write a poem. Write a scene or a flash fiction. Feel good about that. Don’t equate sheer volume with value. If you have found the perfect image for how you or your character feels, that writing session has been totally worth it.

6.  Give yourself breaks to rise and walk about the room, or do some stretches. (As I write this, I am actually chuckling at myself, because I am notorious for locking myself into a fixed, hunched position for hours on end. I need to take my own advice!)

7.  Find support and community if aloneness isn’t working for you. Move beyond the family who are on your side but who may not necessarily understand how you’re feeling. Join fellow creatives in co-working sessions. Just knowing that other people are quietly working with you can be a real encouragement and solace. It can also create a sense of accountability, if you have buddies to discuss the session with, before and after, sharing intentions and what was achieved. It’s a paradox that you need to create a kind of ‘bubble’ round yourself for flow to happen, but that bubble isn’t burst in the presence of other creatives.

UPDATE: I’ve now developed a self-study mini-course, Create your Home Writing Retreat. Find out more here.

Invitation: I’ve just run my second free online writing retreat (Sat 4th April), after the first went so well a couple of weeks ago. Attendees have reached out to me afterwards saying how valuable they’ve found these sessions so it’s likely I will host more! If you want to know when I arrange the next one, please sign up for the Fictionfire newsletter via the form below - you can unsubscribe at any time.

Can being ill ever benefit your writing?

You may have noticed this blog has been quiet for a little while. It’s because I’ve been fighting with my body. Or, to be more precise, I’ve been learning not to fight my body.

At the end of last year, I ran into a wall. I had been pushing myself, the way I do. When it complained, I told my body to shut up and keep on going. This is what we are all so guilty of. We live in a society that says do it, have it, keep burning the candle at both ends. Face it, conquer it. Your body is your vehicle. Your body is your servant. Your body is not as important to you as your mind and soul. It is merely the container for those abstract, superior elements. Exhaustion is your default state – but that’s a good thing, isn’t it? It shows you’re putting in effort; in modern culture, striving and effort are gold badges of worth.

Then there comes the day when the body says ‘Enough’. It tells you, ‘I’ve had it with this attitude. I’ve had it with you not taking care of yourself. Of me.’

That rebellion can take the form of an exhaustion so draining there is no functionality left. Illness creates a fog in the mind. That questing, rational brain of yours can no longer dart about. It is lassoed from below and chained to a body that now asserts itself as having primacy.

Or a grumbling, niggling level of illness suddenly grows into something unmistakable. Something that fills the foreground of your awareness and stops you thinking of anything else. The body’s main weapon in this is pain. Pain makes you sit up and pay attention, like nothing else does or can.

This is what happened to me. Two health issues reached crisis point in December. I was told both required operations. One of those operations I have now had (the other isn’t so urgent). Three weeks on from the operation, I look back and take stock of it all. For weeks beforehand, virtually unable to eat and living with the fear of severe pain if I ate the wrong thing, my energy levels and my mental acuity both went through the floor. In the recovery phase, I have had to learn patience. Passivity. A willingness to wait. I am not good at those things!

Regular readers know I’m writing a book on mindset for writers. Oh, the irony! I had to live my own advice. I had to understand that I couldn’t push on with the book and publish as speedily as I had planned. Nor did I want to, once I had accepted the situation. Why? Because, quite simply, the book would not have been good enough. The book wouldn’t have been as rich and considered as I wanted it to be. There is pushing on, there is driving on – and there is the old proverb about more haste, less speed. I would add: more haste, poorer quality.

So how have I used the time of this health crisis? I have learned to sit and think, quietly. I have learned to doze and not feel guilty about that. I have learned to give my body time to rest and heal. It deserves that care and respect.

I am lucky enough to work mainly at home, but my new morning regime has involved staying in bed, reading and writing, in what I call ‘the bed office’. This has been amazingly productive in the last three weeks, as my brain revives and with it the enthusiasm and joy I feel about the book. It was not dead; it was merely sleeping.

I have written parts I would not have written had I not had this crisis. This is the creative paradox of it all.

If you are a writer and your health challenges you, either temporarily or continually, here are some recommendations I hope will help you:

·        Maintain awareness that you are not separate from your body.

·        Imagination is a wonderful thing but it can be two-edged in that we imagine the worst results from our symptoms (even without late-night Google searches!) However, remember that it’s your imagination that gives you the empathy to be a richer writer.

·        Try to turn resistance and resentment into acceptance. We use the ‘fighter’ image so often when it comes to illness, but it isn’t always the appropriate way to look at it.

·        If you can’t write, use the time to read and ponder – you are refilling the creative well.

·        Illness isn’t romantic. You’re not one of the Brontë sisters (and what they endured was pretty hellish). Illness isn’t pretty. But it is human and it brings out human kindness. Accept help from others even if you’re the stubbornly independent type.

·        Do what you can, not what you think you must. Do the minor things and don’t obsess about the central task you really can’t cope with right now.

·        If the work has worth, it won’t go away. It will wait for you. Have faith.

Interested in reading The Unputdownable Writer’s Mindset? Sign up here for advance news and sneak peeks in the run-up to publication.

I am really excited to be talking about mindset during the Women in Publishing online summit March 2-8 2020! Grab your free pass here. This gives you 24 hour access to an incredible range of talks and presentations on all aspects of writing and publishing. Or you can upgrade to the Full Access pass at an early bird rate before March 1.

Collected Fictionfire blogposts 2019

My favourite reads of 2019

Well, hey, it’s that time again: time to look back over the past year. Time to take stock. I’m starting by selecting some of the books I’ve enjoyed most in the past twelve months. My year has as usual involved lots of ‘professional’ reading: searching out examples of writing technique for workshops, books that compare with clients’ work so I can give guidance as to genre and market etc. To be honest, I’ve been feeling that I’ve lost some of the joy of reading fiction. Too often, my editorial brain kicks in and I start analysing, spotting flaws, inconsistencies and repetitions and coming up with ways to improve the structure or the prose. This means that I find myself enjoying non-fiction more and more, as you’ll see from the list.

It also means that some books disappointed me. Some of these were ‘big-hitters’ with huge marketing clout behind them. It wasn’t that they were bad, as such, just that they weren’t quite as mind-blowing as I had hoped they’d be. And two of them, one a heavily-promoted debut, the other a prize-winning historical novel, really could have done with serious editorial advice! The debut started brilliantly, then followed the law of diminishing returns, culminating in an unbelievable ending, sketchily executed. The historical had gorgeous language and detail but neither gripped nor convinced me.

Right, now I’ve got the Scroogey curmudgeonly stuff out of the way (and no, I’m not going to name the books in question!), time for the goodies. These are books that stood out for me as jolly good reads.

Fiction:

I like crime novels and the stand-outs for me were Lisa Jewell’s Watching You and JJ Marsh’s Behind Closed Doors (the first in her Beatrice Stubbs series – strangely, although I’ve read several, I hadn’t yetread the series starter!) and Bad Apples. I love how these books combine crime and mordant wit along with a wonderfully unconventional heroine and her eccentric circle of friends. A bonus is the range of European backdrops for Beatrice’s adventures. Her latest, Black Widow, is on my list for 2020.

Emily St John Mandel: Station Eleven. Now, it took three goes for me to get into this book but once I was in I was really in, increasingly awestruck by the architectural complexity of a post-apocalyptic story full of intelligence, pathos and the celebration of human creativity in a destroyed world. It was gripping, memorable, haunting, clever. One I will definitely re-read.

David Nicholls: One Day. I was late to the party on this one but loved how he captured the different eras of his characters’ lives. Great dialogue, great social observation.

Non-fiction:

Michael Palin’s Erebus is about a famous ship, lost for more than a hundred and fifty years under the icy waters of the Canadian Arctic. It was one of the famous Franklin expedition ships and that’s a subject I’ve been fascinated by for decades so I couldn’t wait to read the book. What was a revelation, though, was the story of that ship before it became part of that doomed expedition: the gallant Erebus had led a life of adventure for many years, including voyaging the stormy seas of the Antarctic. Palin is genuine in his enthusiasm and the deceptively light touch of his narration is a delight.

Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad about my Neck has all her trademark sharp wit. Wry laughter and recognition throughout. I wish she were still around.

Bernadette Murphy’s Van Gogh’s Ear is an extraordinarily detailed examination of the mystery of the famous event in Arles. She applies the skill of a detective and the familiarity of someone who lives in that region to unpick the legend and get to the bottom of what really went on. I bought this at the ‘Van Gogh in London’ exhibition at Tate Britain, one of the highlights of my year.

Robert Macfarlane’s Underland is an exploration of the hidden places of the world, deep under our feet, deep in the bowels of cities, caves and mines. It is gorgeously written and it is profoundly thoughtful, so much so that it’s one of those books you can only read in instalments because it feels like too much for you to take in. Plus some of his accounts are quite horrifying, if you are at all prone to claustrophobia. I remember when I was 19, crawling on hands and knees through a low passage in the Sterkfontein Caves in South Africa, utterly freaked out by the lack of light and the sense of the weight of rock poised above my skull – this book brought that sensation back to me. But if you want an erudite guide who will show you places you never imagined and take you on a journey of historical and ecological resonance, he’s your man. (Lofoten, Norway, oh wow – echoes of Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter.)

Clare Josa’s Ditching Imposter Syndrome helps you to do just that. It’s inspiring, direct and encouraging, waking you up to how imposter syndrome manifests itself in your life and career. Like her earlier Dare to Dream Bigger, it is one of those books you devour fast, knowing you’ll go back for a slower, thoughtful read after.

I read Robert Poyton’s Do/Pause during my research for my book The Unputdownable Writer’s Mindset (coming out next year - sign up for the wait list here!) It’s a small book but a really wise one, highlighting that in our fast-paced hyper-productive lifestyles we become our to-do lists and lose sight of what truly matters or how to manage our lives. He is ‘not so interested in how you cram more in to your life but in how you get more out.’ At this time of the year, at the solstice, at the season of festivals, this would be a good book to read and remind yourself that sometimes it is important to step off the treadmill.

Good reads yet to come:

Of course, like you, I have a vast to-be-read pile. Here are some I own but didn’t get to this year: Marion Turner’s Chaucer – A European Life; Peter Moore’s Endeavour (another ship book!); Maria Popova’s Figuring – I have followed her amazing Brain Pickings blog for several years and highly recommend it. Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and C.J. Sansom’s Tombland (I was given it last Christmas and cannot believe I haven’t read it yet!) Plus many novels by my writer friends, a whole range of clever, enchanting and gripping fiction queuing up on my Kindle or my bookshelves!

Which were your favourite books of 2019 – I’d love to know! Do please comment below and share your recommendations! I have no single book of the year this year but you can read about my choice last year - the amazing and powerful Smash all the Windows by Jane Davis here.

Lessons Learned on a Solo Writing Retreat

I’ve just returned from a week by the sea. I planned the trip for ages and in the run up to it I often lay awake, heart racing with gleeful anticipation. I had run retreats for other writers before, in St Ives and Oxford, where my focus had been on enabling attendees to access their creative energy and get productive.

This one, though, was all about me. Which made me feel a little guilty. I’m a woman, a mother, a mentor to other writers. I’ve run my literary consultancy for a decade now and before that I was a teacher. I’m a little out of the habit of putting my writing first!

I arrived late on the Saturday evening. I couldn’t get into the rental property at first, which is a whole other story! On Sunday morning, I laid out my papers, notes and laptop. I thought about the six precious days ahead and how this book, already more than half-written, was going to make giant strides forward.

Then, quite simply, I panicked.

So here, at the other end of that precious week, are some lessons I’d like to share with you to help you if you’re considering going away to write: they’ll also remind me when I go on my next solo retreat – and yes, there will definitely be a next one!

1                     If life has got in the way and you haven’t been working on your book for a few weeks or months you can’t expect it to jump and greet you like an old friend the minute you decide to pay it some attention. It’s going to be like my sister’s cat: whenever she’d been on holiday, on her return, instead of rushing to be petted, it would turn its back on her. It would have to be coaxed round. So it is with your abandoned masterpiece. You’re going to have to sweet-talk it. You’re going to have to give it time to thaw out towards you.

2                     Which leads to the next problem. You don’t have all that much time. You don’t feel you can wait for it to warm up naturally, so you try to force the issue. You open up Scrivener. You reread some older bits, dismayed because they feel as if someone else entirely wrote them. You can’t remember what your fine intentions were. You’re all at sea. The panic grows and with it, the paralysis. You go out for a walk, hoping that will help. It doesn’t. Force is not flow. Thus endeth Day 1. Only 5 to go.

3                     You stay indoors the next day. You think that relentless application of the seat of the pants to the chair will help. It doesn’t. You read inspirational work connected to your topic. At first, all that does is spark envy and a sense of inferiority. What were you thinking – that you could contribute an individual vision to this overcrowded subject?

4                     You picked one of the loveliest places in the world for your retreat. You start to think that may have been a Very Bad Idea. You leave the laptop and sit in a chair by the window, watching the light change ceaselessly. The weather is mostly bad. But you see a rainbow plunge its arc into the bay in front of you. You are seduced by beauty. It is a distraction. You might as well have paid for this week as a holiday and let yourself enjoy it as such.

5                     On Day 3 you see another rainbow (you see 10 by the end of the week – is that a sign?). You take more notes from that inspirational book. You start grabbing at post-it notes and jotting down ideas and phrases. Some of those ideas seem to reach out to others, like those films you see of neurons sending little tendrils out at the synapses within the brain. That evening, for the first time, the spirit moves you to write. You write nearly 2000 words in one fell swoop. An immense relief floods you. An immense weight drops away.

6                     On each of the days that are left you write 4000 words. You know other writers would write more. You don’t care. Those words, damned in your brain, have suddenly started flowing and you are in an altered state of consciousness. You don’t edit, you don’t reread, you don’t think too hard – you just let them rise.

7                     You realise that next time you won’t book a week. You will book 10 days or more. You will factor in that you need to depressurise before you can begin to let things flow. Writing is not a switch you flick at will. When you care about it the way you do this book, you must let it rise like the water in a well, slow, silent, inexorable, until it reaches the brink and spills.

8                     You learn that the beauty of the place was not a distraction. It was part of a meditation. It was part of a mental state. You needed it and you will again.

9                     You learn that a balance of intense burst of writing with going for a walk (even if your ears are falling off with the cold) or simply sitting, watching the waves and hearing their rhythm, has worked for you. What’s more it has restored something in you.

10                 On the train home, still writing, you look up and see that 10th rainbow. A gift.

Now I am back home, the next task is not to let the magic evaporate. I still have part of the book to write and life will inevitably get in the way. But I will make steady forward progress, heading for publication in early spring. If you want to hear how I get on and later read special advance excerpts, for this is a book I am writing to help other writers, you can sign up at www.unputdownablewriter.com. And if you want to keep helping me make this book as relevant as possible, please do take my quick anonymous survey: https://forms.gle/rSxHNhMuduvERJdPA

Are you in Europe and interested in learning how to self-edit? I will be teaching a half-day workshop and offering one-to-one consultations at Zurich’s WriteCon on 30 November! Visit www.writecon.ch to see the full programme and speakers and make your booking.